Comment Articles

Half a million chances to make money

Rupert Goodwins AnchorDesk

Published: 24 Apr 2002 16:42 BST

It's been almost exactly two years since broadband Net access finally hit the streets of our fair country, and about half a million of us have signed on the dotted line.

It feels like a huge number, especially to those who remember BT refusing to launch DSL because there was 'no demand'. But for a country of 23 million households, that's just 2 percent. Roughly the same number as read the Guardian, or listen to BBC Radio Merseyside: a tidy number, spending around £180m a year with the service providers, but hardly a national exodus into cyberspace. Enough to answer a few questions: what are we all doing with our megabits? And more to the point, are we ready for new business models?

BT thought at first that the broadband customer would want broadband content, and spent loads of money building a palace of glittering delights, a portal with animated agents leaping merrily across the screen, video clips and jaunty music cascading into our homes, and only a rickety old notice on the back door saying "This way to the Internet, if you must. Beware of the tigers." As one of the initial triallists on the service, I was asked several times by BT what I thought of all this -- I, like everyone else, said "Rubbish. Give me the Internet, and leave me alone."

They obviously misheard this as "very nice, but it could do with a bit more animation," because we went through a few more iterations of leaping and dancing. It may still be there, for all I know, drifting like a cross between the Mary Celeste and the Blackpool Illuminations, but I doubt it. Even BT's given up on that by now. It's announced that it's being very clever and launching broadband Internet without the frills -- no portal, no email, just Net.

Now, no offence like, but if BT's discovered a new way of doing things it probably means it's out of date. I can't speak for everyone on broadband, but I know what I get up to online, what the family does and what my friends do. We download software and media, keep a close eye on news, chat to each other and our friends, swap files and go exploring -- and we do it when we like, as much as we like. Google is the inevitable first step in these activities: I don't even have much of a hotlist any more, as I know the keywords that'll transport me to my chosen sites on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.